My Lesson
—R.L. Stevenson.
Forty-eight hours later we drove out of Havre, bound for Paris and Lucerne, where I was to "pick up" that mule, and become a lone wanderer on the face of the earth. Gotteland had seen to the shipping of the car from Southampton, while we spent a day on the crowded sands of Trouville, where I was so lucky as to meet no one I knew.
It was only now, Winston said, that I should realise to the full the joys of motoring, impossible to taste under present conditions in England. Our way was to lie along the Seine to Paris, and Jack recalled to us Napoleon's saying that "Paris, Rouen, and Havre form only one city, of which the Seine is the highway."
Last year, these two had seen the country of the Loire together, under curious and romantic conditions, and now Molly was to be shown another great river in France. We changed places in the car, like players in the old game of "stage coach." Sometimes Molly had the reins, and I the seat of honour by her side. Sometimes Jack drove, with Molly beside him, I in the tonneau; then I knew that they were perfectly happy, though Gotteland and I could hear every word they said, and their talk was generally of what we passed by the way, occasionally interspersed by a "Do you remember?"
Now, if there is an insufferable companion under the sun, it is the average "well-informed person" who continually dins into your ears things you were born knowing. This I resent, for I flatter myself that I was born knowing a good many exceptionally interesting and exciting things which can't be learned by studying history, geography, or even Tit-Bits. Jack Winston, however, though he has actually taken the trouble to house in his memory an enormous number of facts,—"those brute beasts of the language,"—has so tamed and idealised the creatures as to make them not only tolerable but attractive. I can even hear him tell things which I myself don't know or have forgotten, without instantly wishing to throw a jug of water at his good-looking head; indeed, I egg him on and have been tempted to jot down an item of information on my shirt cuff, with a view of fixing it in my mind, and eventually getting it off as my own.
Whenever Molly or I admired any object, natural or artificial, it seemed that Jack knew all about it. She showed a flattering interest in everything he said, and, fired by her compliments, he suddenly exclaimed: "Look here, Molly, suppose we don't hurry on, the way we've been planning to do? Last year we had that wonderful chain of feudal châteaux in Touraine, to show us what kingly and noble life was in dim old days. Now, all along the Seine and near it, we shall have some splendid churches instead of castles. We can hold a revel, almost an orgie, of magnificent ecclesiastical architecture if we like to spend the time. I've got Ferguson's book and Parker's, anyhow, and why shouldn't we run off the beaten track––"
"No, dearest," said his wife gently, but firmly, and I could have hugged her. My bump of reverence for the Gothic in all its developments is creditably large, but in my present "lowness of mind," as Molly would say, a long procession of cold, majestic cathedrals would have reduced me to a limp pulp. "No," Molly went on, "I can't help thinking that the churches would be a sort of anticlimax after our beloved, warm-blooded châteaux. It would be like being taken to see your great-grandmother's grave when you'd been promised a matinée. You know we engaged to get Lord Lane into his lonely fastnesses as soon as possible––"
"I don't believe Monty's in any hurry for them," said Jack, crestfallen. "You ask him if––"
"He'd be too polite to be truthful. No, I'm sure that edelweiss will do him more good than rose windows, and mountain air than incense."
As she thus prescribed for my symptoms, she gazed through her talc window with marked particularity into her "Lightning Conductor's" un-goggled face. It wore a puzzled expression at first, which suddenly brightened into comprehension. "Do they repent having brought me along, and want to get rid of me?" I asked myself. I could scarcely believe this. They were too kind and cordial; still, something in that look exchanged between them hinted at a secret which concerned me, and my curiosity was pricked. Nevertheless, I was grateful to Molly, whatever her motive might be for hurrying on to Paris. Fond as I was of the two, their happy love, constantly though inadvertently displayed before my eyes, was not a panacea for the wound which they were trying to cure, and I still longed for high Alpine solitudes.
I had let myself drift into a gloomy thought-land, when it occurred to Jack that I had better learn to drive. No doubt the clear fellow fancied that I "wanted rousing" and certainly I got it. Luckily, as a small boy, I had taken an interest in mechanics, to the extent of various experiments actively disapproved of by my family, and the old fire was easily relit. I listened to his harangue in mere civility at first, then with a certain eagerness. Molly sat in the tonneau, Jack driving, full-petrol ahead, and I beside him. We talked motor talk, and he forgot the churches, except when they seemed actually to come out of their way to get in ours. I listened, and at the same time gathered impressions of roads—long, strange, curiously individual roads.
Someone has written of the "long, long Indian day." I should like to write of the long, long roads of France. They had never before had any place in my thoughts. Paris and the Riviera had been France for me till now. I had never been intimate, never even got on terms of real friendship with any country save my own; and I had sometimes been narrow enough to take a kind of pride in this. The sweet English country had yielded up her secrets to me; I knew her spring whimsies, her soft summer moods, her autumn dreams, her wintry tempers, and I had vaunted my faithfulness and love. But here was France in prime of summer, giving me of her best. My heart warmed to her loveliness, and I sniffed the perfume of her breath, mysteriously characteristic as the chosen perfume of some loved woman's laces. It was glorious to spin on, on, between the rows of sentinel poplars, bound for the horizon, yet never reaching it, and regarding crowded haunts of men more as interruptions than as halting places.
Harfleur was a mere mirage to me, a vision of a gently decaying town left stranded by the stream of civilisation, flowing past to busy Havre. Some lines from "Henry the Fifth" made elusive music in my brain, mixed with a discussion of carburetters, explosion chambers, and sparking-plugs. At Lillebonne, Winston deigned to break short his string of motor technicalities and point out the position of the Roman theatre, almost the sole treasure of the sort possessed by Northern Europe. I stared through my goggles at the castle where the Conqueror unfolded to the assembled barons his scheme for invading England; and I begged for a slackening of speed at ancient Caudebec, which, with its quay and terrace overhanging the Seine, and its primly pruned elms, had such an air of happy peace that I wished to stamp it firmly in my memory. Such mental photographs are convenient when one courts sleep at night, and has grown weary of counting uncountable sheep jumping over a stile.
Beyond Caudebec we sailed along a road running high on the shoulder of the hill, with wide views over the serpentine writhings of the Seine. Here, Jack urged a turning aside for St. Wandeville or, at least, for the abbey of Jumièges, poetic with memories of Agnes Sorel, whose heart lies in the keeping of the monks, though her body sleeps at Loches. But Molly would countenance no loitering. Her body, she said, should sleep at Paris that night.
We held straight on, therefore, keeping to a road at the foot of white cliffs, sometimes near the river, sometimes leaving it. Quickly enough to please even this unaccountably impatient Molly, we had measured off the fifty miles separating Havre from Rouen, and slowed down for the venerable streets of the Norman capital.
"I suppose even you will want to give half an hour to the cathedral which I love best in France?" Jack inquired, looking back at Molly as he turned from the quay up the Rue Grand Port, and stopped in the mellow shade of an incomparable pile which towered above us.
Molly's mushroom, however, was agitated in dissent. She has an American chin, and an American chin spells determination. We could not see it, but we knew that it meant business. "You and I will spend hours in the cathedral another time," she said. "But now—" She did not finish her sentence, nevertheless a look of comprehension again lighted up Jack's face, which for the moment was innocent of goggles.
"Molly's so keen on the Maid," said he, "that she can't forgive Rouen for not really being the scene of the trial and burning. But never mind, since she wills it, we'll shake the dust off our Michelins, and when we're outside, you will have got far enough in your motoring lesson, I think, to try driving."
What the last hour had not taught me (thanks to him) in theory of coils and accumulators, electromagnets and other things, was scarcely worth learning. I seemed to have looked through glass walls into the cylinders, at the fussy little pistons working under control of the "governor,"—a tyrant, I felt sure. I had already formed a mature opinion on the question of mechanically operated inlet valves (which sounded disagreeably surgical), and was able to judge what their advantage ought to be over those of the old type worked by the suction of the piston. I could imagine that more than half the fun of owning a motor car would lie in understanding the thing inside and out; and I said so.
"It's a little like controlling the elements," Jack answered. "Think of the difference in this machine, when it's asleep—cold and quiet, an engine mounted on a frame, a tank of water, a reservoir of cheap spirit, a pump, a radiator, a magnet, some geared wheels fitting together, a lever or two. My man twists a handle. On the instant the machine leaps into frenzied life. The carburetter sprays its vapour into the explosion chamber, the magnet flashes its sparks to ignite it, the cooling water bathes the hot walls of the cylinders—a thing of nerves, and ganglions, and tireless muscles is panting eagerly at your service. You move this lever, you press your foot lightly on this pedal; the engine transfers its power to the wheels; you move. The carriage with you and your friends is borne at railway speed across continents. You can hurl yourself at sixty miles an hour along the great highroads, you can crawl like a worm through the traffic of cities."
By the time Jack had finished this harangue we had climbed the hill out of Rouen and were on the fine but accidenté highroad that leads past Boos and Pont St. Pierre. Soon we would reach Les Andelys and Château Gaillard. Still Jack was not quite ready to let me put my newly acquired knowledge into practice. There was a hill of some consequence before Mantes, which we had to reach by way of La Roche Guyon and Limay. After that there would be only what the route book calls "fortes ondulations"; and under the stronghold of Lion Heart himself (an appropriate spot, forsooth!), I was to try my hand at dragon-driving.
Winston brought the car to a standstill at the foot of the mouldering ruins of Richard's "Saucy Castle," and as we looked up at the towering battlements, the huge flanking towers, and the ponderous citadel, the dark mass on its lofty rock set in the sunny landscape like a bloodstone in a gold ring, seemed to be an epitome in stone of life in the Middle Ages.
I uttered every idea that came into my mind concerning the ruin, and squeezed my brain for more, till my head felt like a drained orange; not that I enjoyed hearing myself talk, or thought that Jack and Molly would do so, but because they could not well interrupt the flow of my eloquence to remind me of the reason for our stop.
At last, however, silence fell upon us. It was a shock to me when Molly broke it. "Oh, Lord Lane, have you forgotten that this is where you're to begin driving? The road is nice and broad here."
I put on a brave air, as does one at the dentist's. "I hope that you're not afraid I shall run you into a ditch?" I asked, laughing. "I don't believe, after all, it can be any worse than steering a toboggan down a good run, or driving a four-in-hand with one's eyes shut, as I did once for a wager on a road I knew as I knew my own hat."
"Perhaps it isn't exactly worse," said Molly, "still—I think you'll find it different."
I did.
Meanwhile, however, Winston was cheering me on. "You'll find steering the simplest thing in the world, really," he assured me. "There's no car so sensitive as this. The faster you go, the easier it is––"
"But, perhaps he'd better not try to prove that, just at first!" cried Molly, with an affected little gasp.
"No, no; certainly he won't, my child. He won't go beyond a walk until he's sure of himself and the car. You needn't be frightened. I know my man, or I shouldn't trust him with you and your Mercédès. Now, then, Monty, are you ready?"
I had never before sufficiently realised the solemnity of that word "now." It sounded in my ears like a knell, but I swallowed hard, and echoed it. To do myself justice, though, I don't think I was afraid. I was only in a funk that I should do something stupid, and be disgraced forever in the eyes of Molly Winston. However, I reflected, it couldn't be so very bad. Molly herself, and even Jack, had to learn. Winston had explained to me several times the purpose of all the different levers, and, at least, I shouldn't touch the brake handle when I wanted to change the speed.
"No need to grip the wheel so tightly," said Jack, and I became aware that I had been clinging to it as if it were a forlorn hope. "A light touch is best, you know; it's rather like steering a boat. A very slight movement does it, and in half an hour it has got to be automatic. Of course, always start on the lowest, that is, the first speed, and with the throttle nearly shut."
Mine was in much the same condition, but I managed to mutter something as I moved the lever, and touched the clutch-pedal with a caress timid as a falling snowflake. Almost apologetically, I slid the lever into position, and let in the clutch. Somehow, I had not expected it to answer so soon; but, as if it disliked being patted by a stranger, the dragon took the bit between its teeth and bolted. I hung on and did things more by instinct than by skill, for the beast was hideously lithe and strong, a thousand times stronger and wilder than I had dreamed.
Every faculty of body and brain was concentrated on first keeping the monster out of the ditch on the off side, then the ditch on the near. My eyes expanded until they must have filled my goggles. We waltzed, we wavered, we shied, until we outdid the Seine in the windings of its channel.
I fully expected that Winston would pluck me like a noxious weed from the driver's seat where I had taken root, and snatch the helm himself; but strange to relate, I remained unmolested. Jack confined his interference to an occasional "Whoa," or "Steady, old boy"; while in the tonneau so profound a silence reigned that, if I had had time to think of anything, I should have supposed Molly to be swooning.
"Why don't you curse me, and put me out of my misery?" I gasped, when I had by a miracle avoided a tree as large as a house, which I had seen deliberately step out of its proper place to get in my way.
"'Curse you,' my dear fellow? You're doing splendidly," said Jack. "You deserve praise, not blows. I did a lot worse when I began."
Thus encouraged, I gained confidence in myself and the machine. Almost at once, I was conscious of improvement in mastering the touch of the wheel. Soon, I was imitating a straight line with fair success, subject to a few graceful deviations. I realised that, after all, we were not going very fast, though my sensation at starting had been that of hanging on to a streak of greased lightning.
I began to sigh for more worlds to conquer, and when Jack reminded me that we were on the first speed, I pronounced myself equal to an experiment with the second. He made me practice taking one hand from the wheel, looking about me a little, and trying to keep the car straight by feeling rather than sight. When I had accomplished these feats, and had not brought the car to grief (even though we passed several vehicles, and I was drawn by a demoniac influence to swerve towards each one as if it had been the loadstone to my magnet, or the candle to my moth), Jack finally consented to grant my request. He told me clearly what to do, and I did it, or some inward servant of myself did, whenever the master was within an ace of losing his head. I pressed down the clutch-pedal, pulled the lever affectionately towards me, and very gradually opened the throttle, so as not to startle it. In spite of my caution, however, I thought for an instant we were really going to get on the other side of the horizon, which had been avoiding us for so long. We shot ahead alarmingly, but to my intense relief, as well as surprise, I found that Jack had not exaggerated. It was easier to steer on the second speed than on the first. I had merely to tickle the wheel with my finger, to send us gliding, swanlike, this way or that. To be sure, I did well-nigh run over a chicken, but I would be prepared to argue with it till it was black in the face (or resort to litigation, if necessary) that the proper place for its blood would be on its own silly head, not mine.
Elated by my triumphs, I scarcely listened further to Jack's directions; how, if I thought there was danger, all I had to do was to unclutch, and put on the brake, whereupon the car would stop as if by magic, as it had for Molly in the Fulham Road; how I must not forget that the foot brakes had a way of obeying fiercely, and must not be applied with violence; how I must remember to pull the brake lever by my hand, towards me if I wanted to stop; how it acted on expanding rings on the inside faces of drums, which were on the back wheels (I pitied those poor, concealed faces, for the description was neuralgic, somehow), and I could lock them at almost any speed.
"I want to get on the third, and then I'll try the fourth, thank you," I interpolated impatiently. "More-more! Faster, faster! Whew, this knocks spots out of the Ice Run!"
"Let him have his way, Jack," cried Molly, speaking for the first time. "Hurrah, the motor microbe is in his blood, and never, never will he get it out again."
"Full speed ahead, then!" said Jack.
I took him at his word. I could have shouted for joy. Mercédès was mine, and I was Mercédès'.
Pots, Kettles, and Other Things
Is, and shall be, my appetite for food."
—C.S. Calverley.
A little bin,
Which keeps my little loaf of bread
Unchipt, unflead;
Some little sticks of thorn or brier
Make me a fire."
—Robert Herrick.
If any man had told me before I started, that in two days I should find it a genuine sacrifice to stop driving a motor car, I should have looked upon him as a polite lunatic. It was only because Jack could drive faster than he dared to let me, and because I was ashamed to tell Molly that after all I was not in a desperate hurry to reach Paris or anywhere else, that I finally tore myself from the driver's seat of the Mercédès. Afterwards, though I had not reached the stage when confession is good for the soul, I sat wondering what there was expensive and at the same time disagreeable which I could give up for the sake of possessing a motor of my own. In various phases of my mental and spiritual development, I had framed different conceptions of a future state beyond this life. Never, even in my earliest years, had I sincerely wished to be an angel with an undeserved crown weighing down my forehead, and a harp, which I should be totally incompetent to play, within my hand; but now it struck me that there might be a worse sort of Nirvana than driving a 10,000 horsepower car along a broad, straight road free from dogs, chickens, or any other animals (except, perhaps, rich, knighted grocers), and reaching all round Saturn's ring.
Dogs had been the one "little speck in garnered fruit" for me when driving, for I love dogs and would not willingly injure so much as the end hair of the most moth-eaten mongrel's tail; therefore my brain searched a remedy against their onslaught, as I sat mute, inglorious, in the tonneau, after my late triumphs.
We flashed on, passing the kilometre stones in quick succession. At pretty little Mantes we crossed the Seine, and presently came into the France I knew in my old, conventional way; for we passed St. Germain, and so on to Paris by Le Pecq, Reuil, the long descent to the Pont de Suresnes (which seemed to hold laughable memories for Jack and Molly), through the Bois down the Champs Elysées, and to our hotel in the Place Vendôme, where Jack announced that we had had a run of 130 miles. Winston and I flattered ourselves that Paris had few secrets from us (though I don't doubt that five minutes' wrestling with Baedeker might have made us feel small), and we had no wish to linger at this season. But, if we were deaf to the sirens who sing in the Rue de la Paix, Molly was not. She had discovered that there were some "little things she wanted, which she really thought she had better buy." I fancy that the little things were shoes; anyhow, it was to be Jack's blissful privilege to help her choose them, and he was of opinion (probably founded on experience) that it would take nearly all day. I decided to call on a man at the Embassy, ask him out to lunch, and do him very well. I had not seen him for years, and he had bored me to extinction the last time we met; but it had come to my ears that he had been in love with Helen Blantock, and proposed to her, so I felt that there would be a certain charm in his society. Later, there was a "little thing" which I, too, wished to buy (though I did not intend to seek it in the Rue de la Paix), and then I was to meet Molly and Jack about tea time at our hotel, in time to arrange for dining out somewhere.
After all, the man was more boring than ever, as he had got himself engaged to another girl, and insisted upon talking of her, instead of Helen. My one pleasure in the day, therefore, lay in purchasing the article of which I had fixed my mind after driving yesterday. This was a water pistol, warranted to keep dogs at bay, in motoring. I had some difficulty in obtaining it, and when I did, it was expensive, but I was rewarded by the thought of the pleasure my acquisition would afford my friends. The wild dashes of dogs in front of the wheels gave Molly such frequent starts of anguish, that I wondered Jack had not thought of this simple preventive, and I congratulated myself on having remembered an advertisement of the weapon which I had seen in some magazine. It was, I thought, rather clever of me to remember, since in those days motors had been no affair of mine; but then, the illustration had been striking, in every sense of the word. It had represented a lovely girl, with hair unbound, saving from destruction the automobile in which she sat with several companions, by shooting a fierce blast of water into the face of a huge beast well-nigh as terrible as Cerberus. I determined to surprise Jack and Molly, when the right time should come; accordingly, the moment I reached our hotel, I filled the pistol with water, and placed it, thus loaded, in the pocket of my motoring coat ready for emergencies. Hardly had I made this preparation for the future when I discovered on the table a note addressed to me in Winston's handwriting.
"Dear Monty," I read, "Molly and I have a bet on. She has bet me a dinner that you will drive her car out to Madrid, and meet us at half-past seven, so that we can have the dinner by daylight. I have bet her the same dinner that you won't. Which of us must pay?—Yours, Jack."
I whistled. What, drive the car through the traffic of Paris? It must be a joke. Of course it was a joke, but––
When I had dressed for dinner, I strolled over to the garage not far away where the creature lurked. Anyhow, I would have a look at her, and see what orders Gotteland had received. Yes, of course it was a joke. Or else my poor friends had gone mad. Still, there was a kind of madness with method in it. Diabolical wretches, with their bets, and their dinners! Did they dream I would try to do it, and smash the car? "Nothing like driving a motor through traffic, to give one self-confidence afterwards," Jack had said yesterday, after praising me for refraining from killing a small boy in a village street. "Once a man has been thrown on his own resources, and has got through the ordeal all right, it is as good as a certificate," he had added.
Gotteland was in the shrine of his goddess, talking to other cosmopolitan-looking persons in leather. There was a nice smell of petrol in the place. I snuffed at it as a war-horse scents the battle, and promptly decided that the joke should become deadly earnest, no matter what the consequence to the cart the chauffeur, or myself.
"Everything is ready, my lord," said one of the sacrifices about to be offered up. He had now discovered that there was a sort of starting-handle to my name, and seemed as fond of using it as he was of the equivalent on his beloved motor.
"Did Mr. Winston—er—say anything about my driving?" I humbly inquired.
"Well, my lord, his orders were that it should be as you pleased. But perhaps I had better mention that driving is careless in Paris, with cabs and automobiles all over the road, to say nothing of the trams; and then there's the keeping to the right instead of the left. If you should happen to get a little confused, my lord, not being accustomed to drive in France––"
"I wish I had a mille note for every time I've driven a four-in-hand through this blessed town," said I. "I'm not afraid if you're not."
"Oh, my lord, I've been in so many accidents, one or two more can't matter," he replied, as Hercules might have replied if asked whether he were equal to a Thirteenth Labour in odd moments. "When I was jockey in Count Tokai's racing stables, a horse went mad and kicked me nearly to death. Then I was a racer in old bicycling days, and had several bad spills. This scar on my face I got in a smash with one of the first Benz cars made. My master thought it a fine thing at that time to go ten miles an hour, and before he'd driven much, my lord, he was determined to take the car through the streets of Düsseldorf himself. There was a wagon coming one way––"
"Thank you," I cut in, "I'll bear the rest of that story another time. I'm not sure it would exhilarate me much at the moment. We'll be off now, and I'll do my best not to adorn you with a second scar."
Without another word, Gotteland started the motor. The critical eyes of the assembled chauffeurs pierced to my marrow, but I squared my shoulders, prayed my presence of mind to behave itself and not get stage fright; then—noblesse oblige!—we swept in a creditable curve to the door of the garage, and out in fine style. Gotteland also tried to look unconcerned. I think I must have seen this with my ears, as both eyes were fully occupied in searching a way through the surging current of street traffic, but I did see it. I was pleased to find that I was the better actor of the two, for Gotteland's attitude revealed a strained alertness. He was like a woman sitting beside a driver of skittish horses, saying to herself: "No, I won't scream or seize the reins till I must!"
A sneaking impulse pricked me to take the easiest way, by the Rue de Rivoli, and across the Place de la Concorde, but I shook myself free of it, and with high resolve turned the car towards the Boulevards, determined that, if Molly won her bet, it should be well won. A sailor steering a quivering smack towards harbour in a North Sea hurricane; an Indian guiding a bark canoe through the leaping rapids of a swollen river: to both of these I likened myself as the dragon threaded in and out among the adverse streams of traffic. The great crossing by the Opéra was a whirling maelstrom; a policeman with a white staff, scowled when he should have pitied; I felt alone in chaos before the creation of the world. As for Noah and his ark, not an experience could he have had that I might not have capped it before I reached the Bois.
If I have a guardian spirit, I am sure that to numberless other good qualities he adds the skill of an accomplished motorist; for if he did not get the car to Madrid, without a single scratch upon her brilliant body, I do not know who did. I have no distinct memories, after the first, yet when we arrived at our destination, Gotteland generously complimented, and as I did not care to go into psychological explanations, I accepted his eulogium. It was Jack, not Molly, who paid for the dinner at Madrid, and it was a good one.
Next morning early we started on our way again. Jack driving, and I watching his prowess. I was now as anxious to meet dogs belligerently inclined towards motors, as I had been to avoid them, but it was not until we were well past Fontainebleau that the chance for which I yearned, arrived. Suddenly we came upon a yard of Dachshund wandering lizard-like across the road, accompanied by a pert Spitz. The waddler prudently retired, but the Spitz, with all the disproportionate courage of a knight of old attacking a fire-breathing dragon, lanced himself in front of the car. After all, what are dragons but strange, new things which we know nothing about and therefore detest? This brave little knight detested us, and with magnificent self-confidence essayed to punish us for troubling his existence.
My hand flew to my pocket, but paused, even as it grasped the water pistol. The dog was small, the weapon large. A fierce jet of water propelled from its muzzle might blow the breath from that tiny body, which my sole wish was to warn from under the wheels of Juggernaut. However, he was persistent, and was in real danger, since to avoid an approaching cart, Jack was forced to steer perilously near the yapping beast.
I snatched the weapon, pulled the trigger, and—a mild, mellifluous trickle which would have disgraced a toilet vaporiser sprayed forth. Jack, Molly, and the peasants in the approaching cart burst into shouts of laughter. The Spitz, undismayed by the gentle shower, which had spattered his nose with a drop or two, leaped at the weapon, and, irritated, I flung it at his head. It fell innocuously in the road and our last sight of the Spitz was when, rejoined by his lizard friend, he industriously gnawed at the pistol, mistaking it for a bone, while the Dachs gratefully lapped up the water I had provided. My surprise was a popular success, but not the kind of success which I had planned. Jack said that he could have "told me so" if I had asked him, and I vowed in future to let dogs delight to bark and bite without interference from me.
The one inept remark which Shelley seems ever to have made was that "there is nothing to see in France." My opinion, as we spun along the road which would lead us to Lucerne and my waiting mule, was that there was almost too much to see, too much charm, too much beauty for the peace of mind of an imaginative traveller; there were so many valleys which one longed to explore, in which one felt one could be content without going farther, so many blue glimpses of mysterious mountains, veiled by the haze of dreamland, that one suffered a constant succession of acute pangs in thinking that one would probably never see them again, that one would need at least nine long lives if one were to spend, say, even a month in each place.
Molly advised me not to be a spendthrift of my emotions, at this stage of the journey, lest I should be a worn-out wreck before the grandest part came, but the idea of husbanding enthusiasm did not commend itself to me. Why not enjoy this moment, instead of waiting until the moment after next? It was too much like saving up one's good clothes for "best," a lower-middle-class habit which I have detested since the days when I howled for my smartest Lord Fauntleroy frills in the morning.
There were sweet villages where they made cheese, and where I could have been happy making it with Helen Blantock; there were châteaux with turret rooms where my book shelves would have fitted excellently; but always we fled on, on, until at last, after two bewildering, cinematographic days, we drove into the streets of that dignified and delightful city, Bern.
It had not been necessary for us to pass through Bern; it was, in fact, a few yards more or less out of the most direct path. We chose this route simply and solely with the view of paying a visit to the Bears. Molly had never met them; I had neglected them since childhood; Jack looked forward to the pleasure of introducing them to his wife.
It was on our way to call upon the Bears, that destiny seduced me to turn my head at a certain moment, and look into a shop window. Suddenly the flame of my desire for the walking solo with a mule accompaniment (somewhat diminished lately, I confess) leaped up anew. There were things in that window which made a man long to be a hermit.
"Mrs. Winston." I cried (Molly was driving), "for goodness' sake stop."
In an instant the car slowed down. "What is the matter?" she implored. "Are you ill? Have we run over anything?"
"No, but look there," I said eagerly. "What an outfit for a camping tour! My mouth waters only at sight of it."
"Greedy fellow," commented Jack from the tonneau. "Drive on, Molly. Get him past the shop. He doesn't really want any of those things, and wouldn't use them if he had them. The sooner he forgets the better."
"Never shall I forget that Instantaneous Breakfast for an Alpiniste," I fiercely protested, "and I will have it at any cost. I know there's no other shop on the Continent like this, and I shall buy an outfit for myself and mule, here, if I have to come back from Lucerne by train for it."
"Hang your mule!" exclaimed Jack. "I was hoping you'd forgotten all about him by this time, and had made up your mind to go on with us indefinitely."
I saw reproach blaze through the talc triangle in Molly's mushroom. (Yet I thought she liked me, and had not, thus far, found "three a crowd.")
"Lord Lane isn't a chameleon, Jack," said she, "that he should change his mind every few minutes. Of course he's going to have his mule trip. And as for this shop, all those dear little pots and kettles and things in the window are too cute for words. He shall have them."
Was I to be a bone of contention between husband and wife?
"Please, both of you come in and help me choose," I meekly pleaded, in haste to restore the peace which I had broken.
We got out, and a small crowd collected round the car, Gotteland standing by with his chin raised and the exact expression of the frog footman in "Alice in Wonderland." One would have said that he saw, afar off, the graves of his ancestors, on the summit of some lonely mountain.
It was what Molly would have called a "lovely" shop, and it did business under the strange device: "Magasin Suisse d'Equipment Sportif." The name alone was worth the money one would spend. Everything to cover the outer, and nourish the inner sportsman, was to be had. I felt that I could scarcely be lonely or sad if I possessed a stock of these friendly articles. Jack's ribald advice to buy a pelerine, and a green-loden Gemsjäger hat with a feather, stirred me neither to smiles nor anger, for Molly and I were already deep in exploration.
The first thing I bought was a mule-pack. Being a merciful man, I chose one of medium size, for already I could fancy myself becoming fond of the animal which was to be my companion in many wild and solitary places, and I did not wish to overburden him. I then, aided and abetted by Molly, began to choose the pack's contents.
An "Appareil de cuisson alpin, Idéal" went without saying, like the air one breathes. It composed itself, according to the voluble attendant who displayed it, of six parts, each part far better than the others. There was a gamelle, with a "crochet pour l'enlever" and a couvercle, which, not to show itself proud, would lend its services also as an assiette or a poêle à frire. There was the burner of alcohol; there was "le couvercle de celui-ci," which served equally to measure the spirit, and there was a charming appareil brise vent which had the air of defying tornadoes. When I had secured this treasure, Molly drew my attention to a series of aluminium boxes made to fit eggs and sandwiches. I bought these also, and, pleased with the clean white metal, invested in plates, goblets, and water bottles of the same. Next came a couvert pliant, containing knife, fork, and spoon; and, lest I should be guilty of selfishness, I ordered a duplicate for the man who would look after the mule. Best of all, however, were the tinned soups, meats, vegetables, puddings, and cocoas, which you simply set on the fire in their bright little cans, and heated till they sent forth a steamy fragrance. Then you ate or drank them, and were happy as a king.
Molly and I selected a number of these, and completed the list with a sleeping bag and a tente de touriste, which she persuaded me would be indispensable when lost in the mountains, as I was sure to be, often.
When my goods and chattels came to be collected, we were shocked to find that the mule-pack would not contain them. The question remained, then, whether I should sacrifice these new possessions, already dear, or whether I should doom my mule to carry a greater burden. The attendant intimated that Swiss mules preferred heavy loads, and had they the vocal gifts of Balaam's ass, would demand them. Swayed by my desires and his arguments, I changed my pack for a larger one. After more than an hour in the shop, we tore ourselves away, leaving word that the things should be sent by post to Lucerne. We then repaired to the Bear Pit, by way of the Clock, and having supplied ourselves with plenty of carrots, had no cause to complain of our reception.
In Search of a Mule
—Matthew Arnold.
Come, long-sought!"
—Percy Bysshe Shelley.
Jack no longer attempted to dissuade me from my walking tour. Whether Molly had talked to him, or whether he had, unprompted, seen the error of his ways, I cannot tell, but the fact remains that, during the rest of our run to Lucerne, he showed a lively interest in the forthcoming trip.
"I suppose," said he, when we had caught our first sight of Pilatus (seen, as one might say, on his back premises), "I suppose that anywhere in Switzerland, there ought to be no trouble about finding a good pack-mule. Somehow one thinks of Switzerland and mules together, just as one does of bacon and eggs, or nuts and raisins, and yet, I can't recall ever having come across any mules in Lucerne, can you, Monty?"
"No," I admitted, "but there were probably so many that one didn't notice them—like flies, you know."
"Of course, the air of Switzerland is dark with mules and donkeys," said Molly, who always seemed quick to resent any obstacles thrown between me and my mule. "One sees them in picture books. All that Lord Lane will have to say is, 'Let there be mules,' and there will be mules—strings of them. He will only have to pick and choose. The thing will be to get a good one, and a nice, handsome, troubadour-sort of man who can cook, and jodel, and sew, and put up tents, and keep off murderers in mountain passes at night. It may take a day or two to find exactly what is wanted."
"The best person in Switzerland to give Monty all the information he needs," said Jack, evidently not wholly convinced, "is Herr Widmer, who has an hotel high above Lucerne, on the Sonnenberg. He has another in Mentone, and I've heard him tell how he has often come up from the Riviera to Switzerland on horseback. He would be able to advise Monty exactly how to go."
"Let's stop at his place on the Sonnenberg, then," said Molly, who never took more than sixty seconds to make the most momentous decisions, less important ones getting themselves arranged while slow-minded English people drew breath.
Certainly, as we drove through the streets of Lucerne, we saw neither mules nor donkeys, but Molly accounted for this by saying that no doubt they were all at dinner. In any case, with the blue lake a-glitter with silver sequins dropped from the gowns of those sparkling White Ladies, the mountains; the shops gay and bright in the sunshine, on one side the way, shadows lying cool and soft under the long line of green trees on the other, who could take thought of absent mules? Let them dine or die; it mattered not. Lucerne was beautiful, the day divine.
When we were lunching on the balcony of the Winstons' private sitting-room at the Sonnenberg, with mountains billowing round and below us, I saw that there was something on Molly's mind for she was distraite. Suddenly she said, "Before you talk to Herr Widmer about your mule, don't you think that you had better decide absolutely upon your route?"
"But, darling," objected Jack, "that is largely what he wants advice about."
"He can't do better than take mine, then," said Molly. "Lord Lane, promise me you'll take mine and no one's else."
"Of course I'll promise," I answered recklessly, for her eyes were irresistible, and any man would have been enraptured that so exquisite a creature should interest herself in his fate. "It doesn't much matter to me where I go, so long as I can moon about in the mountains, and eventually, before I'm old and grey, bring up on the Riviera."
"Well, then," said Molly, "since you are so accommodating, I not only advise but order you to go over the Great St. Bernard Pass, down to Aosta."
"Might a humble mortal ask, 'Why Aosta?'" I ventured.
"Because it's beautiful, and beneficent, and a great many other things which begin with B."
"You've never seen it, though," said Jack.
"But I've always wanted to see it, and as you and I have another programme to carry out at present, it would be nice if Lord Lane would go, and tell us all about it. He's promised me to keep a sort of diary, for our benefit later."
"I saw the Duchess of Aosta married at Kingston-on-Thames," I reflected aloud. "She was a very pretty girl. What am I to do after I've made my pilgrimage to her country—about which, by the way, I know practically nothing except that there's a poster in railway stations which represents it as having bright pink mountains and a purply-yellow sky?"
"Oh, after Aosta, I've no instructions," replied Molly, as if she washed her hands of me and of my affairs. "For the rest, let Fate decide." As she spoke, she looked mystic, sibylline, and I could almost fancy that before her dreamy eyes arose a vision of my future as if floating in a magic crystal. For an instant I was inclined to beg that she would prophesy, but the mood passed. All that I asked or expected to get from the future was a mule, a man, some mountains, and forgetfulness.
It was decided, then, that the only questions to be put to Herr Widmer should concern the mule. I had a vague dream of presently standing on the balcony, while various muleteers and their well-groomed animals passed in review under my eyes, but the landlord's first words struck at my hopes and left them maimed.
"There are no mules to be had in Lucerne," he said.
"In the country near by, then?"
"Nor in the country near by. The nearest place where you could get one would be in the Valais—best at Brig."
"But I don't want to go to Brig," I said forlornly. "If I went to Brig, that would mean that I should have to do a lot of walking afterwards, to reach the parts I wish to reach, through the hot Rhone Valley, where I should be eaten up by gnats and other disagreeable wild beasts. I know the Rhone Valley between Brig and Martigny already, by railway travelling, and that is more than enough."
"The Rhone Valley is a misunderstood valley. Even between Martigny and Brig, it is far more beautiful than anyone who has seen it only from the railway can possibly judge," pleaded Herr Widmer. "It well repays a riding or walking tour."
But my soul girded against the Rhone Valley, and I would not be driven into it by persuasion. "I'd rather put up with a donkey to carry my luggage," said I, with visions of discarding half my Instantaneous Breakfasts, "than begin my walk in the Rhone Valley. Surely, Lucerne can be counted on to yield me up at least a donkey?"
"You must go into Italy to find an âne," replied the landlord, inexorable as Destiny.
I suddenly understood how a woman feels when she stamps her foot and bursts into tears. (There are advantages in being a woman.) To be thwarted for the sake of a mere, wretched animal, which I had always looked upon with indifference as the least of beasts! It was too much. My features hardened. Inwardly, I swore a great oath that, if I went to the world's end to obtain it, I would have a pack-mule, or, if worse came to worst, a pack-donkey.
At this bitter moment I chanced to meet Molly's eyes and read in them a sympathy well-nigh extravagant. But I knew why it had been called out. If there is one thing which causes unbearable anguish to a true American girl it is to find herself wanting something "right away" which she cannot have. But luckily for her country's peace, her lovers' happiness, this occurs seldom.
"What is the nearest place in Italy where Lord Lane could get a donkey?" she asked.
"It is possible that he might be able to buy or hire one at Airolo," said our landlord. "At one time they had them there, for the railway works, and mules also. But now I do not––"
"We can go there and see," said Molly.
"Airolo's on the other side of the St. Gothard, and automobiles aren't allowed on the Swiss passes," remarked Jack.
This, to me, sounded final, so far as Airolo was concerned, but not so with the Honourable Mrs. Winston!
"What do they do to you if you do go?" she asked, turning slightly pale.
"They fined an American gentleman who crossed the Simplon in his automobile last year, five thousand francs," answered Herr Widmer.
"Oh!" said she. "So an American did go over one of the passes? Well, thank you so much; we must decide what to do, and talk it over with you again later. Meanwhile, we're very happy, for it's lovely here."
Hardly had the door of the sitting-room closed on our host, when Molly, with the air of having a gun-powder plot to unfold, beckoned us both to come near. "I'll tell you what we'll do," said she, in a half-whisper, when surrounded by her body-guard of two. "First, we'll ask everybody in Lucerne whether there are any mules or donkeys on the spot, just in case Herr Widmer might be mistaken; if there aren't any, let's go over the St. Gothard in the middle of the night."
"Good heavens, what a desperate character I've married!" exclaimed Jack.
"Not at all. Don't you see, at night there would be nobody on their silly old Pass that they make such a fuss about. Even in daylight diligences don't go over the St. Gothard in our times, and at night there'd be nothing, so we couldn't expose man or beast to danger. We'd rush the douanes, or whatever they call them on passes, and if we were caught, what are five thousand francs?"
"I wouldn't dream of letting you do such a thing for me," I broke in hurriedly. "If Airolo or the neighbourhood turns out to be the happy hunting ground of the sedate mule or pensive âne, I will simply take train––"
"You will take the train, if you take it, over Jack's and my dead bodies," remarked Molly coldly.
"It would be rather sport to rush the Pass at night," said Jack.
"Oh, you darling!" cried Molly, "I've never loved you so much."
This naturally settled it.
We walked down to the town by an exquisite path leading through dark, mysterious pine forests; where the slim, straight trunks of the tall trees seemed tightly stretched, like the strings of a great harp, and where melancholy, elusive music was played always by the wind spirits. In Lucerne we did not, as Molly had suggested, ask everybody to stand and deliver information, but we compromised by visiting tourists' bureaux. At these places the verdict was an echo of our landlord's, and I saw that Molly and Jack were glad. Having scented powder, they would have been disappointed if the midnight battle need not be fought.
Molly had never seen Lucerne, which was too beautiful for a fleeting glance. It was arranged that, after driving me over the Pass, for weal or woe, they should return. They would leave most of their luggage at the Sonnenberg, and come back to spend some days, before continuing their tour as originally mapped out.
We slept that night in peace (it is wonderful how well you do sleep, even with a "mind diseased," after hours of racing through pure, fresh air on a motor car); and next day we began stealthy preparations for our adventure.